Martin McDonagh’s Seven Psychopaths turns genre clichés on their head with a cracking cast

Seven Psychopaths, from the writer and director Martin McDonagh — who gave us
In Bruges — is exactly the kind of film that, in theory, I hate. It’s full
of gangsters and hit men who do that sub-Tarantino/Guy Ritchie comic-geezer
gangster talk. It’s awash with blood and gory killings. Worse still, it’s a
film about film (zzzzzzz), the kind of self-referential and self-critiquing
work that imbecilic film critics — you know who you are — used to praise as
“playfully postmodern”. Yet I loved it.

The setting is sunny Hollywood. Marty (Colin Farrell) is an alcoholic Irish
screenwriter who can’t finish a script and has a girlfriend (Abbie Cornish)
who’s on the brink of finishing with him. He has a title, Seven Psychopaths,
and one character in mind — a psychopath who he wants to be a Quaker
minister — but that’s about all. Marty doesn’t want his film to be full of
the usual gangsters